Published

1) From: NLS-Messager, Subject: [nls-messager] 3439.en/ Lacanian Review Online: Encounter, Date: 10 May 2020 at 11:58:26 BST

Available at New Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis/Messager see http://www.amp-nls.org/page/gb/49/nls-messager/0/2019-2020/4195

2) Lacanian Review Online : See here  

3) See www.LacanianWorksExchange.net / authors a-z or authors by date for copy with Julia Evans’ notes at the end

References

Lacan told Louvain that: “Death belongs to the dimension of faith. You are right to believe you’re going to die, of course – it keeps you going. If you didn’t believe in it, could you bear the life you have?” (1)  Notes & Information  The Death is from the field of the Mad : 13th October 1972 (Louvain) : Jacques Lacan or here  

:  Download bilingual copy   https://www.freud2lacan.com/docs/La_mort_est_du_domaine_de_la_foi-bilingual.pdf

P7-8 of Anthony Chadwick’s translation : I have been, like that, a little drawn along to note that, on the subject of biology, psychoanalysis finally has not brought along a lot and yet, that’s all it speaks about: life drives then and “I suck you down”, death drives. Well have you heard a little bit about it, yes or no? because without that I’ll pass on, yes or no, is it “yes”, or is it “no”. Ah! You can’t trust all this chatter (applause). Let’s be serious! … Death is in the domain of faith. You are quite right to believe that you are going to die, of course; it keeps you going. If you don’t believe that, could you bear the life you have? If one wasn’t solidly based on that certainty that it will end, could you bear this tale; nevertheless it’s only an act of faith; to top it all, you are not sure of it. Why wouldn’t there be at least one man or woman who could live for 150 years, but really, it’s there that faith regains its strength. So, in the middle of all that, you know what I am saying there, it’s because I have seen it, there’s one of my patients (a very long time ago, so she won’t hear any of this, without that I wouldn’t tell her story) she dreamt one day that existence would spring up always by itself, the Pascalian dream, an infinity of lives succeeding each other with no possible end, she woke up almost mad. She told me; of course I did not find it funny. It’s just that, life is something solid, that on which we live precisely. In life, as soon as one starts talking about it, life of course, we are living it, it’s not in doubt, we realize it at every moment; often it’s a question of thinking it, taking life as a concept; so then, we all take shelter together to get warm with a certain number of little beasts which naturally warm us up, all the more that in so far as our life is concerned, we have no idea at all of what it is. Thank God, that’s the word, he has not left us alone! Since the beginning, since Genesis, there have been countless animals. That it is that which makes life seem the most probable, it’s what we have in common with the little animals. 

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– Death is responsible for reminding us of our existence because sometimes life hangs by a thread, the thread of desire, always unsatisfied, “a golden thread of enjoyment” (2), and this thread loops around the real of life. : 

p13 of Anthony Chadwick’s translation : See above or www.Freud2Lacan.net : Another form of deciphering is what I am putting into play here: another form of deciphering is proposed to us, but the strange thing is that it starts only from another discourse. There is no trace in the beginning of Freud’s discourse of a reference to life. It is a question of a discourse, of a discourse about which he teaches, that of the hysteric, and this discourse, what does he find there? Very precisely, a meaning. And this meaning, in relation to what has been evaluated up to then, is different. It is, will I say, “le” or “la”4, let’s say to clear the way, the thing, it’s jouissance; but if you put the “thing” in two words with a little hyphen, it’s joui‐sens.5 Not one of the sayings of those welcome visitors, those beloved – I called the patient in my thesis I was mentioning just now Aimée, she was not a hysteric – not a single saying of those hysterics about whom we cannot determine which thread, golden thread of jouissance, guides them; and it is precisely for that that this discourse enunciates desire, and makes this desire in order to leave it unsatisfied. Freud guides us and he has given us, it’s true, a new discourse which means, you don’t even realize it, that all the ways that we have for approaching feeling, incident, affectuation6 for something in a certain field, you all (no need for that for you to be in analysis, nor an analyst) you know how to question it in a way for which there is nothing in all of previous literature, even if as such it is done, it bears witness to circling around that. 

Footnotes :

TN4 “Chose” is normally feminine in French, but when masculine it can mean “thingymajig” or “odd”, “bizarre”. Lacan, I think, intends both, although opting expediently for “la chose”.
TN5 Lacan elaborates elsewhere that “joui‐sens” can be further broken down into je/oui‐sens”, I hear meanings. Another translator offers “enjoymeant”. 

TN6 Transcriber’s footnote number 7 questions the word, “l’affectuation”, as either a typo, or a Lacanian neologism. I have opted for the latter. I take to be a portmanteau word combining: affectation, affection, and affecting. 

Information & availability : ‘The Case of Aimée, or Self-punitive Paranoia’: Jacques Lacan: 1932  or here

 Note : If links to any required text do not work, check www.LacanianWorksExchange.net. If a particular text or book remains absent, contact Julia Evans. 

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 Julia Evans

Practicing Lacanian Psychoanalyst, London

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Other texts

Of the clinic  here 

Case studies here  

Lacanian Transmission  here 

Some Lacanian History  here 

Topology  here 

From LW working groups  here

By Nelson Feldman here   

By Sigmund Freud here 

Notes on texts by Sigmund Freud  here 

By Jacques Lacan here 

Notes on texts by Jacques Lacan here 

 By Julia Evans here